New to Reverse Osmosis - Lots of questions

[molf20]

My friend and I have been making maple syrup for many years now. He is getting older and wants to spend less and less time boiling. I have a full time job and don't have time to boil all day. We have 1100 taps and are boiling in a 2 x 8 evaporator. Therefore we are looking into an RO. I know next to nothing about RO's and therefore I have some questions.

I was told that the RO needs to be kept in a heated room. Our camp does not have heat except when we are boiling. Is this going to be a problem? I would like to be able to quickly run our sap through the RO and boil the sap, all in the same evening. How long does it take to run sap through the RO? What size RO should I be looking for? I'm looking to run the sap through only once to bring it up to around 8%. If I run 250 gallons through the RO, how much concentrate will I get? How many tanks will I need?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Luke Steeves
Elgin, New Brunswick
Canada

[maple flats]

There are a few RO's that claim not to require a heated room, but most do. I'll let someone else address the ones that claim not to need heat. When I got my RO I had no heat. I bought an RO on wheels and store it in a well insulated room, barely large enough to get the RO into. I started by heating the room using 3 light bulbs @ 100 watts each. I still use that as emergency back up but I now have a propane wall heater installed, made by Housewarmer. It runs off a bulk tank I have for many other needs, originally a propane canner, finisher,hot water tankless heater and a weed burner torch (for lighting the fire). A few months ago I got a water jacket canner which uhas an electric 3000 watt element. The heater I have is only 8000 BTU and it has a standing pilot and requires no power. It is direct vent, exhausts out an inner pipe and pulls combustion air thru an outer pipe and it runs off a thermostat.
When I start my RO I'm firing the evaporator within 10-15 minutes. You will want an RO that does 250 GPH or more, upwards to 500-600 GPH. When I'm starting my RO I start by running it at a slightly lower pressure, which give me more concentrate and less permeate. As soon as my heat tank level is high enough, I turn the pressure up. This gives me less concentrate (but at higher sugar) and more permeate (the pure water removed from the sap.) If my head tank starts to get full enough, I simply close the fresh sap valve and at the same time I open a recirculate valve. this removes more water from the concentrate, thus raising the sugar %. It is quite easy to run in this manner.
Once you run sap thru an RO, you need to boil it right away or you must be able to keep the temperature of the concentrate down to 30-34 F, once sap is concentrated you not only concentrate the sugar, but you also concentrate the micro-organisims and if not kept cold enough it will spoil much faster that raw sap will.
RO's are rated in GPH, that is the amount of sap at 38 degrees it will process in an hour. The way I do it I concentrate til I have about 30 gal. in the head tank before I light the fire, by the time the evaporator is fully going I have 50 or so gal in the head tank and at that point I either run the pressure to match my evaporation rate or I run a little faster than the evaporator and then recirculate to remove more water.
I have a 3x8 and I generally fire it to boil about 70-75 gph. Before the RO I made between 6-8 qts/hr of syrup, I now draw 4-5 times that in syrup and I use way less wood. Before the RO the most taps I had was about 900 taps. Later I worked up to 1320 taps but since then I have scaled back to 750, not because the equipment couldn't handle it, but because I lost 3 workers as they graduated college and I was getting up in years (now in my 70's).
Before the RO I had one time when we boiled 21 hrs. a day for 2 days in a row and during that time I also sold 1150 gal of sap to another producer. Since the RO my longest boil has been usually 3-4 hrs and all sap is boiled, occasionally a 5 hr boil when the sap is running great, and I also boil sap from other producers on shares, the get back a % based on what the sugar % of the sap was and I keep the rest.
If you get a RO rated at 250 GPH at 2% sugar and take it to 8% sugar (mine will do that) you end up with about 62-63 gal of concentrate to boil, thus if you boil more than that in an hour you either need to run the pressure lower (get more concentrate and less permeate) or start farther ahead or get a bigger RO.
Tanks, at a minimum you need 1 sap tank, one head tank and 1 permeate tank. You should have 2x the hourly rating for permeate storage, because you use permeate to clean the RO.
I have a 250 GPH RO, use 3 sap tanks at the sugarhouse and 2 more on a trailer I use to haul sap for almost 1700 gal storage for sap, then a 150 gal head (concentrate) tank and a 1000 gal permeate tank and I never leave sap to process the next day.
Once you get an RO you will wonder how you ever got by without it.

[Russell Lampron]

My friend and I have been making maple syrup for many years now. He is getting older and wants to spend less and less time boiling. I have a full time job and don't have time to boil all day. We have 1100 taps and are boiling in a 2 x 8 evaporator. Therefore we are looking into an RO. I know next to nothing about RO's and therefore I have some questions.

I was told that the RO needs to be kept in a heated room. Our camp does not have heat except when we are boiling. Is this going to be a problem? I would like to be able to quickly run our sap through the RO and boil the sap, all in the same evening. How long does it take to run sap through the RO? What size RO should I be looking for? I'm looking to run the sap through only once to bring it up to around 8%. If I run 250 gallons through the RO, how much concentrate will I get? How many tanks will I need?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Luke Steeves
Elgin, New Brunswick
Canada

If you get a big enough RO you can concentrate your sap and boil at the same time. I'm assuming that you have electricity at the sugar house to run the RO. You can build a small insulated room for the RO that you can easily heat with a small electric heater. If you start with 2% sap you will remove 3/4 of the water to get it to 8%. From 200 gallons of raw sap you will get 50 gallons of concentrate. With 1100 taps you should probably be looking for a 600gph RO. With my set up I have a bulk tank for raw sap storage, a tank for concentrate storage, 2 permeate tanks and the feed tank for the evaporator. I have the seperate concentrate tank because I recirculate my sap to get it sweeter. I normally bring it to 14% before I boil and draw off about 5 gallons of syrup an hour with my 2x6 evaporator. Boiling concentrate is a lot of fun and making 100 gallons of syrup with 1 cord of wood isn't bad either.

[molf20]

Thanks for all the help guys! Now, I just need to find the best RO for me for the best price.

[Snowmad]

[QUOTE=Boiling concentrate is a lot of fun and making 100 gallons of syrup with 1 cord of wood isn't bad either.[/QUOTE]

I just got a MES 225 RO. This year with 165 taps on 3/16 I had over 4,000 gallons of sap and burnt about 12 face cord of wood on my 2x6 boiling 10-12 hours a day. I've been using this crappy weather to cut wood for the evaporator because I ran out last winter and was burning every pallet I could find in a 20 mile radius. I'm hoping to get about 12 face cord in my shed. I assume you mean 100 gallons on a full cord but still, that's impressive. I can't wait until next season to see what I can do. Bad thing is, I really enjoy boiling. Guess I'll have to find a few more trees to tap and if I have left over wood, that won't be a bad thing!

Maple Flats, I enjoyed reading about your RO experiences as well. I'm about 30 miles south of you.

[MISugarDaddy]

Snowmad,
With your new RO, you will end up using about 3 to 4 cords of wood for that much sap.
Gary

[Russell Lampron]

I just got a MES 225 RO. This year with 165 taps on 3/16 I had over 4,000 gallons of sap and burnt about 12 face cord of wood on my 2x6 boiling 10-12 hours a day. I've been using this crappy weather to cut wood for the evaporator because I ran out last winter and was burning every pallet I could find in a 20 mile radius. I'm hoping to get about 12 face cord in my shed. I assume you mean 100 gallons on a full cord but still, that's impressive. I can't wait until next season to see what I can do. Bad thing is, I really enjoy boiling. Guess I'll have to find a few more trees to tap and if I have left over wood, that won't be a bad thing!

This season I made 184 gallons of syrup and used just over 2 cords of wood. The big killer of the woodpile was maple weekend when I had to boil raw sap for 2 days. I work a full time job and the RO lets me boil the sap when it's fresh and still get some sleep. I processed over 11,000 gallons of sap with my 125 RO and 2x6 this season. I rarely boiled for more than 2 hours.

[nymapleguy607]

This season I made 184 gallons of syrup and used just over 2 cords of wood. The big killer of the woodpile was maple weekend when I had to boil raw sap for 2 days. I work a full time job and the RO lets me boil the sap when it's fresh and still get some sleep. I processed over 11,000 gallons of sap with my 125 RO and 2x6 this season. I rarely boiled for more than 2 hours.

+1 to what Russ said. I boiled in the ball park of 9000 gallons of sap and made 155 gallons of syrup and used about 2 cord of wood. The longest boil was about 4 hours this year, most were about 2.5 hours.

[Lanark]

I'm also new to reverse osmosis, I'm building one that resembles the RO bucket so that it's portable. My sugar shack is 500 metres from the house, I'll be putting up 80 buckets this year and have 3x 55 gallon drums and 3x45 gallon drums for storage, water and collection. The sap I'll be running through the RO will be cold since I'll no way of heating it. I'm thinking that if I wait until late afternoon to run the sap through the RO I could then let the concentrated sap sit in my evaporator pan over night and boil first thing in the morning. I'm also not sure how much permeate I should be saving for the cleaning/washings.

Since my RO will be portable I can bring it back to the house and run warm water through it to clean the filters then cold permeate and store it in the house until next use. Does my plan for this spring sound reasonable?

[carls47807]

Sound like a good plan. If you keep the concentrate under 8% and keep it cold it will last thru the night. Keep 10-15 gallons of permeate to flush. Download our users manual from our website (www.therobucket.com) and look at our flushing guidelines to get an idea of a maintenance routine. It’s important that you take the old filter out and put a new one in when you flush it out.

Carl


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[Lanark]

Thanks Carl.

I'm also going to a seminar at the local CDL dealer tomorrow on how to use and maintain a hobby RO. Hopefully there will be some handouts on the maintenance.

[carls47807]

Sounds like fun. Those seminars are usually geared to the larger hobby crowd (500+ taps). Even their smallest machines do 100+ gph. You can still get a lot of good info though, just keep in mind that if you build a simple single pass system, it will be much easier to maintain than a 4x40 column with recirculation.


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[Lanark]

I've read on this site about PH strips and I'm not sure what they're used for. Is it strictly for well water users to test the quality of water?

[JoeJ]

In order to properly clean your membranes, you have to check the PH of the soap in your wash water. Check what PH is required by the membrane manufacturer.

You should have a water test done on your well water if you are using the well water to wash or rinse your membranes. The well water has to be low in iron and manganese or the water will foul the membranes.

Joe